If you had told me at the start of this year that we would finish 6th, win a final, and bow out to Geelong in a semi, I would take that.

I honestly did not expect us to make the finals this year, so to perform as we did has exceeded most expectations. Some highlights of a great building season.

1. Barlow: Fremantles recruiting staff have gone from having the worst reputation to the best. Barlow figured in early Brownlow betting....not bad for a first year player. He will be back better than ever in 2011

2. Other young guns: Hill is developing nicely thank you...no one seems to be comparing him to Rich or Nic Nat anymore. DoBoer has decided that being good looking does not mean you cant be tough and throw yourself into contests. Suban and Broughton are developing into fine young players. Walters has shown more than enough to prove he will be a key player moving forward, helping out the brilliant and hard working Ballyntyne and Mayne.

3. Sandi! : Yes he got injured, but he is without doubt the best ruckman in the AFL, taking marks and kicking well when his confidence is up. A gamebreaker.

4. Winning in Sydney convincingly

5. Winning in Brisbane convincingly

6. Pavlich committing for life. Our most important player played the best he ever has in the first part of this year, he will probably play forward more next year as he is less needed in the midfield, prolonging his brilliant career.

7. Filling stadiums: Freo surpassed West Coasts crowds for the first time ever this year. The Purple Army is a great support for the team, something evident in the game against Geelong earlier in the year, where the noise was deafening, and against Hawthorn in our final...where the support spurred the players on.

2011: I am calling it...the Year of the Docker

Postscript: we need to resign Mundy...he has become a premier midfielder...and for a bloke his size, thats important.

Posted by
Mark Edwards

4
comments:

Anonymous

11:48 am

I agree mostly with what you say. With such a young side, this year was always going to be about development.

Our serious flag tilts will be the next few years, or for as long as Pavlich and Sandilands are playing well.

Although losing Tarrant is a huge loss--bigger than it has been given credit for.

The final point that I would make is that the Dockers handling of Paul Hasleby and the end of his career was an absolute disgrace. The inclusion of an unreliable Headland instead of Mr Reliable against Geelong was an absolute travesty.

I think the inclusion of Hedland was a calculated risk which did not pay off. But Harvey has proved himself to make good decisions all year.

They gave Hasleby a good send off at Hawks game. Unfortunately his performances (in my view) did not warrant a call up...but having said that, he would have been a better choice than Des...but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I think the call to play Headland was the right one. I saw the incident where he hurt his knee, the injury was completely unrelated to any of his past injuries. It was just one of those freakishly unlucky things that saw him strain his medial ligament in his 'good' knee. His form leading into the final was good. He was averaging 24 possessions a game and getting 5 inside 50's per game. His goal assists were desperately needed if we were to go deeper into September. If he didn't do his medial I'm sure he would have been far more valuable in the final.

I wrote a blog post in the pre-season saying player for player I thought Freo this year would be better than in 2006 where they finished one game away from their first grand final birth. I wrote this after watching quite a bit of their training over the summer & I wasn't too far off the mark.

There should be a lot of list changes in the coming months with up to 10 players retiring, being delisted or traded to other clubs. Dodd, Haselby, Tarrant, Headland, Hinkley, Murphy, O'brien, Schammer, Thornton & Solomon should all part ways with the club. 3-4 of those places will be filled by upgrading rookies, leaving at least 6-7 new senior listed players coming to the club and at least 3 new rookies.